


redamancy

by Xine



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Destroy Ending, M/M, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 10:02:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xine/pseuds/Xine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But Shepard chose Kaidan, the man whose hand rested at the base of his skull and lightly pressed fingers into freshly-buzzed skin. Shepard chose Kaidan, and Kaidan would simply have to remind himself that was all that was important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	redamancy

**Author's Note:**

> **_redamancy_** \- ( _n._ ) the act of loving the one who loves you; a love returned in full.

It had been months.

Months of being stranded on some non-surveyed land, months of repairing the mass relays and communication links, months between hospital visits and failing vital signs. Months of healing skin grafts and non-rejected implants.

To him, it felt like they had beaten every obstacle in their path, every single one that dared to appear impossible.

But goddammit, this was Shepard.

Nothing was impossible with Shepard.

And yet, Kaidan still had difficulty understanding that Shepard was here – actually here, a physical, tangible thing that he could touch and then feel with his fingers a heartbeat beneath the rows of ribs of a scarred and battered chest.

A real, living thing, no matter how much of Shepard's body had become synthetic after somehow beating death at its own game for the second time.

Shepard was the first to beat death once. He was the first – and probably always will be – to beat it a second time.

He might as well be immortal.

No one could reach the same caliber as this man, the one who held Kaidan like a fragile piece of glass, a piece so thin that the slightest current of wind would cause it to crack.

And Kaidan would never understand why he was held that way – he knew without doubt that Shepard wouldn't, couldn't break him, because for as strong as Shepard is, always has been, Kaidan is his equal. Kaidan may not have even a fraction of the scars that Shepard wears – physically and psychologically – but, fuck, does he have his own fair share.

Shepard knows that.

Yet he holds Kaidan like he could lose him at any moment. As if they could lose one another again like they did running for the beam; like on the Citadel when both of them were on the wrong end of a gun; like on Mars where Kaidan has blank frames for memory between cranial assault and a hospital bed; like on Horizon where old wounds were reopened without warning and without mercy; like on the Normandy where it burned in inferno and landed amongst snow.

It was humbling – being loved by the savior of the galaxy.

Kaidan had said similar words before, before their date of sanity checks and long-awaited confessions, when he was instated as the second human Spectre. Because standing next to Shepard did that to you. No matter how strong you are on your own, Shepard never fails to make you feel less noble, no matter how many people you've saved and protected.

And Kaidan recognized that perhaps Shepard will always feel like he didn't do enough, regardless of how many lives he did save because _he was there_ to do so. Shepard would continue to feel this way until he just couldn't beat death one more time, old and frail and waiting for a final bone to break.

Despite the number of times they both would lay eyes on a broken EDI unit, walking and speaking without issue save for missing fragments of memory and the Reaper code lost with them, despite the gradually growing number of geth being 'resurrected' on Rannoch, empty with gaps and holes and missing parts, Shepard believed he just didn’t do _enough_ , and Kaidan knew how wrong Shepard was in that regard because emotion radiated off Shepard like biotic barriers.

Kaidan knew Shepard had done what he could – no one else could have carried the galaxy on his shoulders like Shepard did, and that weight may not have truly broken his frame, but they surely left fractures that went as deep as the marrow in his bones.

Shepard had crawled all seven rings of hell and somehow made it back atop a hard pillow and beside a slightly harder human, breathing evenly against the upper arm of the one person he could call home.

And by whatever God there could be did Kaidan believe he was undeserving of such a title, knowing full well that Shepard could have anyone within more than an entire light-year radius from where they lay together now.

But Shepard chose Kaidan, the man whose hand rested at the base of his skull and lightly pressed fingers into freshly-buzzed skin. Shepard chose Kaidan, and Kaidan would simply have to remind himself that was all that was important.

Kaidan lifted his head ever so slightly to brush Shepard’s lips with his own, an action of asking permission or of enticement even he couldn’t distinguish. Shepard looked at him with eyes blue like the sky of an incoming storm, skittering for a moment behind dark eyelashes. He pressed forward, capturing Kaidan’s mouth.

They did this often, where vision and actions spoke more than sound and words could ever muster in such a moment. Each of them had reached a point from before Shepard’s first death where they could trade glances for hundreds of syllables and have a clear understanding of what was being said.

Though, perhaps that pertained to being on the field; recalling their first few nights together could Kaidan say that he was unsure when to lean in closer or farther away and to kiss harder or softer, and more often than not could he sense that Shepard, too, was even remotely hesitant.

Shepard was never hesitant.

Yet that very statement was proven wrong when Kaidan’s left ankle had lifted to hook around Shepard’s calf, and Shepard slowly, gently pulled the leg up higher for it to straddle his hip.

Even now, after knowing that there was essentially nothing that could hinder what they already had, it seemed that Shepard was reluctant to take any kind of control over Kaidan, like every action he made was waiting for an “okay” before being told to move forward.

Kaidan had hoped that the increased pressure of his fingers against Shepard’s neck when they separated from their kiss was enough indication that they were moving in the right direction. The hand that lingered on Kaidan’s thigh had fully rested upon it, but remained unmoving.

He wondered when Shepard would simply give in and take what he wanted, because if anyone deserved fulfilling their every wish and desire, it was Shepard.

So Kaidan kissed him again, opening his mouth in invitation, to which Shepard easily complied. The hand on Kaidan’s thigh reached upward until Shepard could grip onto a haunch and pull Kaidan toward him, and Kaidan silently thanked him for finally taking action.

Kaidan’s fingers spread behind Shepard’s head, skin scratching against millimeter-length hair, and he summoned the image of Shepard lying in a hospital bed, connected to countless tubes and wires that acted as his lifeline. His hair had gotten considerably long over the course of many, many weeks, but once able to lift his own food without difficulty was Shepard quick to shave it all off.

To be honest Kaidan had entertained the idea of Shepard having hair that his fingers to run through, to grip onto, to pull at.

He guessed Shepard just preferred the military cut over anything else and tried not to overanalyze it.

When Shepard decided to move his head and drag his tongue along Kaidan’s chest, Kaidan’s hand gripped onto Shepard’s neck and, little by little, he exhaled a breath he hadn’t noticed he’d been holding.

Shepard’s hand curved, fingertips grazing against the vulnerable skin between Kaidan’s legs, and Kaidan gasped for air, throaty and wet in a way that he could only describe as reminiscent of drowning.

The weight on his torso was not just Shepard’s form, but also the ache that went along with loving him.

Loving Shepard was raw in the same way that it was honoring. To be able to watch his back during battle, to be able to trace scarred knuckles during sleepless nights, to be able to sooth knotted backs after nightmares – Shepard had entrusted no one else to such intimacies.

There were some things that Kaidan regretted, sure, but those couldn’t compare to the number of ghosts that haunted Shepard in his dreams. Everything was full circle, always coming back to Shepard believing he didn’t do _enough_.

Kaidan pressed his lips against the top of Shepard’s head, and then against the unexplained scar that formed a perfect crescent into his hairline. To this day, Kaidan had no knowledge of that scar’s origin – and it was safe to assume that it had spawned from the man’s days of running with thugs before joining the Alliance – but he hoped that one day Shepard would indulge him the story.

Shepard’s unoccupied left arm reached above them for an object on the bedpost shelves as he parted from Kaidan’s chest, shifting upward to kiss Kaidan’s jaw and then his mouth. The other hand continued its caresses, slow and deliberate, and Kaidan found his breath quickening with every movement.

If you had told Kaidan, on the prototype Normandy in 2183, that he would be wrapped in his commanding officer's embrace in the eventual future, when all was almost lost and the galaxy falling apart, he would have laughed in your face.

Never, before the war, would he have dreamed that Shepard would reciprocate, and that was his main reasoning for keeping his emotions below the surface.

Initially he had considered it to be a small crush, simple hero worship, because who hadn't fallen for Shepard at some point in their lives? Shepard was fire, and everyone followed his light. Every person under his command held this gleam of infatuation in their eyes when they thought of, spoke to, or looked at the man, and Kaidan wouldn't deny that he was caught under that spell as well.

As time went on, as Shepard became known for his heroism, Kaidan found his apparent crush rooting deeper into his core and turning into pure, unadulterated love – the kind that ate at his soul and made his lungs gasp for more air, and it took him years – literal years – before he dared to say anything of it.

He never would have believed Shepard could love him, too.

Yet, here he was, with Shepard's lips parting from his own, both of them finally locking eyes after what felt like hours. Shepard swallowed, exhaled, and looked at Kaidan in a way that Kaidan understood as "turn around."

The hand shifting from his thigh to his hip guided Kaidan onto his stomach as they disentangled from each other’s limbs. Kaidan heard a click from over his shoulder, and it wasn’t long after that Shepard’s digits began to work inside him.

Kaidan drew in a sharp gasp, clutching onto and burying his face into a pillow.

He had lost track of time at some point during the past few weeks, waiting for Shepard to finally be physically able again after being under doctor’s orders for so long, and now had he fully experienced how badly he missed the other man’s touch.

Shepard’s free hand latched itself onto Kaidan’s hip again, rubbing circles as a means of keeping Kaidan relaxed, easing whatever concerns Kaidan’s body held after such a lengthy time of intimate inactivity. His fingers continued to push in and pull out painfully slow, and it kept Kaidan on edge.

He remembered the moments they shared in the captain’s cabin – Kaidan evening his breathing as he sank into Shepard and listened to him moan deep in his throat – bouts of fucking driven by lust, passion, and a lack of time over the fear of an inevitable death for the both of them that never came to consummation.

Now, they had every single second of their lives to take a moment, to slow down, to get lost in another’s skin and, despite how much his body may protest, Kaidan wanted to relish in all ministrations Shepard was disposing him.

The time they had left was limitless compared to what they thought they once had.

When Shepard’s hands left him, Kaidan let out a noise of disapproval, turning his head to the side in an attempt to see the man behind him.

A hand returned to his back, stroking upward as Shepard’s weight began to settle onto Kaidan, and in a few short moments Kaidan felt Shepard pressing into him, pushing inside him with certainty. Kaidan moaned, deep enough for him to feel it vibrating back at him through the bed sheets.

As he began moving, Shepard leaned down to rest his forehead onto the base of Kaidan’s skull, tangling his fingers in black waves.

Kaidan released sighs, pants, hushed cries in rhythm of Shepard’s hips meeting his skin, thrusting in leisurely, slow, and calculated patterns.

He first noticed it on the hand gripping his hair, but detaching himself from the pleasure could Kaidan feel Shepard shaking above him, the muscles in his body involuntarily trembling with every deliberate movement he made. Shepard soon buried his face into Kaidan’s shoulder, shifting his body to push deeper into the man under him.

Soon, Kaidan felt a newfound wetness on the back of his neck, and he was unsure if it was merely sweat or the tears that had waited much too long to finally shed.

And perhaps that triggered the answer that Kaidan was searching for, the answer to why Shepard never took the lead in their bond, and why that, when he actually did, he was so reluctant to do so.

Cradling him, holding him like glass, kissing him not hard enough – Shepard was afraid of losing Kaidan, not because of external forces acted upon them, but because of the actions of Shepard’s own accord that could possibly give Kaidan reason to push Shepard away, to reject him, turn away, and never look back at him.

Rarely did they speak with words – rarely did they _need_ to. Being caught under enemy fire taught them to use body language as a means of communicating, and until those last moments on Earth, before Shepard ran for the beam, neither of them deemed words to be necessary.

Now, even with all sense of finality gone, Kaidan wanted to use words, because despite how hard he may dig his fingers into Shepard’s skin and despite how eager he presents himself under Shepard’s touch, Kaidan knew that Shepard needed to hear that love rather than simply feel it.

There were so many ways for Kaidan to describe this, how in love he is with Shepard – he could write the man a goddamn sonnet twelve times over and still be unable to articulate exactly how much meaning there is in Shepard’s hold.

Those words he waited too long to say the first time flooded his mouth.

Yet his lungs were laid heavy inside his chest, and as he tried to speak within a gasp, Kaidan found himself drowning and unable to say anything, let alone that single phrase that encompassed everything of this moment.

Kaidan reached outward, pressing a finger against the palm placed beside his shoulder, and Shepard, understanding the gesture, slid his hand onto Kaidan’s, curling his fingers into the webbing between each digit. Kaidan gripped tight enough that his knuckles underneath Shepard’s own turned pale.

While the weight in his lungs refused to disperse, seeing Shepard’s hand grasp onto his own, intertwining joints and bones, caused a steady swelling in his ribcage – a singularity of impossible temperature, everlastingly expanding until it was too much and he felt like he was about to burst.

And within this overwhelming awareness – the singularity in his chest, the hand on his own, the fingers in his hair, the nose digging into his shoulder, the curve of Shepard’s torso meeting the arch of his back with every trembling thrust – Kaidan felt that this is where he belonged, enfolded by the man he loved, who gave, and gave, and gave.

**Author's Note:**

> Written to my fanmix "I will follow you into the dark", posted over at [my blog](http://offdensen.tumblr.com/post/50274760927/) and on [8tracks](https://8tracks.com/offdensen/i-will-follow-you-into-the-dark/edit).
> 
> I rarely write fic as I often hit writer's block and/or I lose inspiration pretty often, but I couldn't get this idea out of my head and decided to vomit out words. So, big thanks to [PetitAvocat](http://archiveofourown.org/users/PetitAvocat) for reviewing this piece and giving me some helpful feedback! ♥


End file.
